The dark green represents the money Occupy OC has cost Irvine, the black is for the bad will generated, the light green is for the money saved, the cyan is for the good will accrued, the gray is for information left out, and the red — very hard to see! — represents the analysis put into the Liberal OC’s story.

I can’t say that I wasn’t told that this Liberal OC, “Occupy OC Costs Irvine Taxpayers $8,600,” story was coming, but now that it’s here — well, I’m not sure what to make of it.

It doesn’t surprise me that the presence of Occupy OC has cost Irvine at least $8,600, if that’s the figure, nor that the costs include legal counsel and electronic signs to discourage honking. Of course, one question one might ask is: what have other Occupations that have not involved peaceful and respectful cooperation between municipal government and protesters costs other cities. As usual, Wikipedia gives us a first approximation of an answer. We find a List of Occupations in the United States. With citations, we find some estimated price tags (all of which are footnoted, most of which are outdated and by now higher):

So while I suppose that while one could criticize the Irvine City Council for handling our protest — which could have become much bigger and more contentious in the absence of constructive cooperation — for a relatively small expenditure, in the grand scheme it seems to be awfully wise choice.

Beyond that, there’s this question: how much of what the City spent would have had to be spent even without the City’s cooperation? The City’s cooperation involved our ability to stay there overnight. Those signs discouraging honking mostly apply to our being in a public park during the day — which is our right. It is also our right to be on the sidewalk at night. The fact that our presence leads passers-by — without our instigation — to honk and disturb the neighbors is not our intent. (We don’t honk.) Shutting the protest down because others do honk is unconstitutional — it’s called a “heckler’s veto.” So those signs don’t belong on the tab.

Meanwhile, some City Attorney time drafting contracts is nothing compared to the amount that would be required for what would have been a serious civil liberties case — as some other cities may yet discover. One question is: how much has Irvine saved? The answer: plenty! For one thing, the City obtained concessions from us, some involving noise abatement, that it would not have otherwise obtained.

Meanwhile, Irvine has been getting great nationwide publicity for its handling of our protest — as we protesters have gotten for our handling of Irvine, which leaves us one of the longest continuing occupations in the country — so much so that when the Cleveland City Council voted to recognize its own Occupation, one of the examples cited of how to make things work was — placid little Irvine! Was that worth $10,000 of good PR?

But perhaps the complaint is that we protesters would better not protest at all, even in the light of the way more than $8,600 than the corrupt objects of our protest have cost the county, including Irvine residents. (It’s probably more than that per household, I’d guess, once you factor in the boom, bust, foreclosure cycle.) That seems to be the thrust of this paragraph.

The latest agreement to allow the Occupy movement to camp expires on Dec. 21. The OccupyOC group is not engaged in voter registration, has not endorsed any candidates for local, state or federal office and has not raised any significant money to back candidates or ballot measures that support the 99 percent.

That (except maybe for the voter registration) is true. The Occupy protest is not a partisan effort, despite the presence of many partisans like myself within it. So I will concede the point. I just don’t understand the point. If it’s that only partisan politics leads to change, my question is: well, haven’t we tried that, and didn’t we end up … here? Maybe we need more than one tool in our shed, eh?

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose worker's rights and government accountability attorney, residing in northwest Brea. General Counsel of CATER, the Coalition of Anaheim Taxpayers for Economic Responsibility, a non-partisan group of people sick of local corruption.
Deposed as Northern Vice Chair of DPOC in April 2014 when his anti-corruption and pro-consumer work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, who then worked with the lawless and power-mad DPOC Chair to eliminate his internal oversight.
Occasionally runs for office to challenge some nasty incumbent who would otherwise run unopposed. (Someday he might pick a fight with the intent to win rather than just dent someone. You'll know it when you see it.) He got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012 and in 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002.
None of his pre-putsch writings ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level, nor do they now.
A family member co-owns a business offering campaign treasurer services to Democratic candidates and the odd independent. He is very proud of her. He doesn't directly profit from her work and it doesn't affect his coverage. (He does not always favor her clients, though she might hesitate to take one that he truly hated.)
He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.)

I think some people did some (or were going to do some) early on; I don’t know how that turned out. It’s fair to say that it has not been a significant priority. I just think that criticizing Occupy for not being the Young Democrats is silly.

Some Republicans there, more Democrats, MOSTLY INDEPENDENTS. And we don’t talk about partisan politics there. Most of these people are very disappointed with Obama right now, I hope he does some good things in the next year to change their minds.

I just double-checked, and we HAVE been doing voter registration for nearly two months. So Dan was certainly not factual there, but just making shit up about people he doesn’t like.

As far as I can tell the rest of his post WAS facts, and it’s balanced off by facts Greg reported above.

And as I also wrote in LOC comments: “With the collaboration of the Irvine Congregational Church, we’ve provided Irvine residents with free screenings of high-quality topical movies for six or seven Fridays in a row so far. Add in our holiday food drives. Soon we’re going to be moving on to occupying/protecting the foreclosed homes of whoever wants us to, including in Irvine. Subtract these benefits from the cost, please.”

We don’t need Dan to kiss our ass. We don’t need him to like us. We don’t need his donations. But we are going to call him out whenever he attacks us and gets things wrong or incomplete.

The Northwood Night Stalker making things up about people he doesn’t like? What a shock! I don’t get why MasterPlannedistan’s biggest NIMBY and the primary Darth Agran asslicker (next to the carpetbagging Ackermans) is so concerned about Occupy OC’s cost to the taxpayer when Darth Agran’s scam known as the Not So Great Park has been a financial sinkhole for almost 10 years now.

You have to remember Vern, this is the same guy who thought Dr. No’s (Councilmember Steven Choi) 2010 candidacy for the 70th AD was a huge threat when he should have focused his venom on Spanky.

Hold on there, cowboy (or cowgirl, as the case may be.) “Reporting all facts” can be misleading without context. So I’m providing context for “facts” like “they spent $8600” such as “is that a lot of money compared to other cities” and “how much of that was due to elements over which the city had control, versus ones where protesters were exercising the same rights that anyone else has.”

Actually cook, with all the ridiculous unnecessary cop overtime, horses, etc., on Occupy Santa Ana’s very first day, I BET YOU THEY SPENT MORE THAN IRVINE HAS IN TWO MONTHS.

$8600? Sheesh.

Guy Fawkes

Posted December 19, 2011 at 9:55 AM

Well Vern, you have to remember that MasterPlannedistan has to find a way to pay the board members of the Not So Great Park. In almost 10 years, we have a orange balloon, a once a week half assed farmer’s market and a merry go round. Besides, they waste money on law enforcement resources anyway by utilizing three cop cars for a traffic violation. If you are driving a car and happen to be the wrong shade of white driving in MasterPlannedistan, then it’s six.

1) because of the Orange County bankruptcy, which was aided and abetted by Wall Street
2) from the illegal practices of Bank of America, a company that Irvine collaborates with and Larry Agram is invested in.
3) through the loss of property values and tax revenues due to the destruction of the wage base of the 99% who have seen their salaries suppressed by corporate America’s immoral tactics such as the use of guest workers, exploitation of tax loopholes, and corruption of our democracy to further their gains and pay
bonuses to their executives.

FYI, Dr. No, Suhkee Kang and Madame Krom are termed out, there will be three seats available in MasterPlannedistan’s Star Chamber. Dr. No is running for Mayor.

As far as the other two open seats go, here something to ponder. Let’s suppose a certain childish blogger/stalker with sociopathic tendencies from the gated surveillance community, also known as the Canyon View area of Northwood, decides to throw his hat in the ring to maintain Darth Agran’s majority in the Star Chamber/Not So Great Park Board. If that does happen, I might know someone that would consider running just to make sure that the ass in question does not become a member of the Star Chamber.